Mr Glue personalised dinosaur stories

I mentioned in my last post that the Mr Glue personalised dinosaur stories that we are in the throes of creating, were going to involve a new step for us on the technology front.

When the Mr Glue Stories app first appeared, some of the feedback that we received was that the format was lovely, but would be even better if the child could have control over the actual tale itself. In other words, come to a cross roads in the story, choose a direction, and that particular route would give you an alternative storyline. As the mother of a child who is completely obsessed with Steve Jackson’s utterly wonderful game books, it did seem to me to be the obvious way to go.

It was a fascinating process establishing how this would actually work in terms of the technology. (Thank goodness Mak understands my incoherent ramblings!) Was it going to involve building a sort of ‘family tree’ structure, where the main story would divide and then divide again? We decided that this would be completely unworkable, certainly at a writing level, we’d end up having to create a far too many story lines. In the end, Mak steered us towards using what are effectively story bubbles, each bubble governed by the choice that the child has made and allowing one to return to the main flow at any point.

For the time being, the first three story bubbles are governed by a depressed time machine, a temperamental fur coat and an alien dude. (Make of that what you will!)

I have been on the receiving end of a huge amount of generous help so far amassing dinosaur facts, and assistance deciding which dinosaurs we should be including. Hooray for all the local young dinosaur enthusiasts! (I have started on my acknowledgements page already!!)